Category Archives: Networking

Friendship is a gift to us all. I am not using the loose term “friends” in initiating these thoughts, but friendship. This is because I am writing about the concept itself and not the simplistic reference to persons we are acquainted with. More so because I am seeking to unearth the deeper dynamics of the operation of the concept in human interaction. So let me quickly share three benefits you enjoy when you find true friendship.

REAL CONVERSATIONS:

Imagine having something to say and not having someone to tell. Imagine also having someone to tell but not having reliable and trusted feedback. Words flow from thoughts and expressed through the lips. However, that process isn’t complete or fulfilling until it is received by another thought process and responded to in an active conversation. Conversations help encapsulate the complexities of life into relatable soundbites that humanize our experience through resonance with another person’s journey.

We were made to communicate, and through this process unburden the mind and heart, that is, the thoughts and emotions layered by the roiling issues we face each day. Conversations help unbundle perceptions, positions, and prejudices we have mustered because they are constantly challenged by other opinions and worldview.

A paper presented at the “Town and Gown” Series at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Covenant University, Nigeria.

Knowledge is power. So goes the popular maxim, which has been severally explored and tweaked in various ways that sometimes we fail to fully deconstruct its essence and practically explore the functional relationship between knowledge and power. While knowledge, on the one hand, is nearly impossible to quantify, its effect on human life is totally verifiable and measurable.

On the other hand, power is quantifiable but its effect is sometimes very hard to measure. Though power can mean different things, we are limited in this discourse to the framework of power as professional competence and the capacity to effect change in any area of human endeavor. It is the marriage of knowledge and power that forms the theoretical basis of my offerings in these thoughts.

In restating the premise of my thesis that knowledge is power, I consider Steve Fuller’s conceptualization of knowledge as “positional good” to be profound enough to terminate this thought. This is in the sense that knowledge expands or extends “the knowers possibilities for actions by contracting the possible actions of other”. If I know what you know, then you have no advantage over me, except in the case where we also have to measure the application of such knowledge. But if I know what you do not know, then I am elevated in advantage. So, yes. Knowledge does confer on one extended possibility for actions that sets one at advantage over others.[1]